MatLab ...

Tom Ligon · Post by **Tom Ligon** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 2:55 pm

I may have to bite the bullet and buy MatLab. I'm not especially happy about it.

I've used it at work, although it seems every time I have the need, my license has expired and I have to get the IT department to renew it. I also always seem to need an upgrade, and they don't seem to install gracefully ... you get an all new installation, abandoning the old directory, in which your previous work is generally stored if you use the defaults. The way the product stores work is unconventional and really irritating.

I'm also not associated with a university, so I'll be paying full price for a commercial license. At this point, I have no idea what that costs, as they won't even tell you until you create an account. I take it, "if you have to ask, you can't afford it."

Then there's the matter of add-ons and toolkits. I can rarely run anyone else's scripts at work because they almost always call up some toolkit I don't have a license for, and they won't get me the license because it costs $3k ... for the privledge of using one function!

Questions:

If I create an account, am I going to get 5 e-mails a day from them for the rest of my life?

What toolkits and add-ons do I need to do what you guys are doing?

Am I buying it, or just renting it? Am I facing hundreds of buck a year in license fees? How fast does it become obsolete? What do upgrades typically cost for commercial users?

kresobilan · Post by **kresobilan** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:05 pm

Octave is an open source that should be able to run MatLab code.
Regards, Kreso

Tom Ligon · Post by **Tom Ligon** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:32 pm

Thanks!

Just scanning the site, I'm not quite clear. Is it Linux-only? Might be a good excuse for me to actually start using my Linux partition.

kresobilan · Post by **kresobilan** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:18 pm

Octave for Windows. Though there might be problems with toolkits.
Regards, Kreso

Jeff Peachman · Post by **Jeff Peachman** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 9:47 pm

And if your into the shady side of things, you can always download it for free with BitTorrent.

But you didn't hear that from me...

rj40 · Post by **rj40** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 12:10 am

Do you still have it at work? Can you do your development there, compile what you need and take it home? You will need the MatLab runtime library to run the executable at home, but I think it is free. Of course, if the whole point is to experiment and “play around,” and not run code on some problem later on, maybe this would be pointless.

drmike · Post by **drmike** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 3:17 am

Also check out Scilab which is available for Windows. It is not exactly matlab, but really darn close.

olivier · Post by **olivier** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 8:27 am

SciLab is backed by a consortium of major research institutes and large firms, it is professionnally maintained.
Most SciLab functions are identical to MatLab's, but not all. SciLab provides automatic translation tools. Here is another information source from down under.
In case you are interested in legal aspects, Scilab are about to release their new version (5.0 beta 4 is already available) under the CeCILL license which is compatible with the GPL (that was not the case for earlier versions).

tombo · Post by **tombo** » Sat Jul 26, 2008 1:35 am

My computer science major son recommends Maxima.
It is open source.
It has versions for Linux, windows & OS-X.
It has arbitrary length floating point arithmetic tools.
It has a long history including DOD use which implies a certain level of armor plating (at least on the old parts).
They claim it has a large community.
The tutorial I looked at was some ugly differential equation sets that were way over my head, so I did not get off the ground with it.
I have no direct experience to speak of, but it is probably worth considering.

Indrek · Post by **Indrek** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 5:13 pm

Maxima is more useful for symbolic math (mainly working with equations instead of evaluating them) and probably not that fast for numeric calculations. Octave is more for the numeric calculations and mimics Matlab directly so should be your first look. As pointed out packaged for both linux and windows are available. I'm learning octave myself right now but it seems to be an incredibly useful thing. Never seen matlab though so have no idea how it compares. I made a simple page about octave on my site:

http://www.mare.ee/indrek/octave/

It has scripts for most of the graphics I've posted as of late so should be useful for wannabes trying to produce their own cool pictures with electromagnets and stuff.

- Indrek